A twice-monthly column of little stories about people who lived large
Joseph J. Ranoia
Hundreds of people filled two rooms at Costantino-Primo Funeral Home in Berlin for the funeral of Joseph Ranoia last month.
When grown men wept.
Joe’s daughter, Marie Ranoia Alonso, estimated the mourners were somewhere between 12 and 62, a span that reflected Joe’s longtime impact as a volunteer coach for a little Catholic school in town. In 50 years, he took the Our Lady of Mount Carmel boys basketball team to more than five championships, along the way becoming a mentor and father figure to hundreds of kids who became men, became parents and became spectators as Joe guided their children.
“It was natural that he would give his life to that role,” noted Marie. “He took on not only the role of coach, but he was a larger-than-life presence in the community. He was never meant to live a small life.”
It was Joe’s beloved wife, Sharon, who nudged him in the direction of coaching. The South Philly native had just brought his young family to Maple Avenue in Berlin, in the time-worn tradition of city dwellers who moved to South Jersey for the fresh air of suburbia and a patch of lawn.
It was a quick walk to Joe’s church, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, now St. Simon Stock. The parish school was looking for a coach. At 28, Joe was working in finance. It was 1974.
“Why don’t you just walk across the street and see if you’d like to do it?” asked Sharon, who always thought her husband was meant to be a teacher.
“He crossed that street and never looked back,” Marie recalled.
For decades, the Ranoias’ phone rang incessantly every night with area coaches calling in scores, wins and losses.
“Our phone never stopped ringing,” Marie said. “Anytime from 7 to 10 p.m., you were on duty to take scores.”
The man sometimes known as Mr. Joe was coaching up until weeks before his death at 80 – when grown men wept.
By that time, his daughter had long learned to live with her dad’s busy role in the lives of other kids.
“I was lucky to share my dad,” Marie noted, “because he was a guy worth sharing.”
Sources: Costantino-Primo Funeral Home, Legacy.com
Maria A. Valente
Maria Valente seemed to have a thing for white: Her piano was white, her sports car was white and the carpet in the room where she taught music was white.
Many a piano and violin student can attest to parting with their shoes when they entered her Voorhees home before stepping onto that white rug. Only then did they proceed to the grand piano with the propped-open lid.
Maria was 72 when she passed last month, having left her mark on hundreds of young musicians who knew her as Mrs. Valente. Some stayed with their instruments through the years, some didn’t, but she never stopped teaching.
A South Philly native, Maria was a classical violinist trained at the city’s Academy of Music, according to her obituary. But she always wanted to teach youngsters and impart in them the joy she herself got from playing. After a stint in the West Chester, Pennsylvania, school district, she made a room in her home the center of her musical life.
If you were Maria’s neighbor, you could hear the music of learning through her window. Awkward at first – wrong tempo, flat instead of a sharp, choppy scales – the music was made perfect with practice. And Mrs. Valente was as excited as her students when they finally finessed a piece.
Her students also got a chance to shine with yearly recitals she planned that drew families and friends. A positive extrovert with a quick laugh, Maria was the perfect host, inside or outside her home.
“She made sure that the lessons she provided were professional and comfortable,” recalled her friend, Lori Singley, whose daughter Kerri took violin lessons. “She certainly had a way with her students.”
Maria attracted many of her pupils by word of mouth; word of her death evoked the sounds of memory.
“Ms. Valente was kind, patient, and endlessly encouraging,” wrote Aya Salem in a tribute posted on her obituary. “She was a bright, beautiful soul who brought joy to everyone around her.”
Sources: Blake-Doyle Funeral Home, Echovita.com
Dominic Roman Reyes, Ivan Gastelum-Zuniga, Brenden Cary
When teenagers die before their time, it is a wrenching loss. But three? Together?
Unthinkable.
But the unthinkable did happen last month, when Ivan Gastelum-Zuniga, Brenden Cary and Dominic Roman Reyes were lost in a car accident. Their families have taken some solace in knowing they were together when they died – as they so often were in their short lives.
Brenden’s guardian, Laura Perez, described the teens as close friends and “amazing kids.”
“They were always together, working on their cars, going to the car wash and car meets, playing video games or just hanging out,” she told the Courier-Post newspaper. “It’s an immense loss that I’m not sure we will ever fully recover from.”
Dominic – known as Dom – had a gentle personality, according to his obituary. The 19-year-old Gloucester County resident was loyal and caring to friends, and his “proudest” possessions were his Mustang and pickup truck.
Ivan, a Camden County resident who was three days from his 18th birthday, had a great spirit and a contagious laugh, his obituary noted, “and a way of making you laugh when you least expected it.”
“You never knew what he was going to say next.”
Brenden – a Gloucester County resident known as Dedo – “was funny, kind and smart,” recalled Perez, to whom Brenden referred as his chosen parent after she took him in at 15. He was good for laughs, too.
“He had a way of making you laugh when you least expected it,” Perez remembered, “always flashed that crooked smile afterwards and laughed that unforgettable laugh. He filled our home with more laughter, love and light than we even knew existed.”
Multiply that light by three and you have an idea why the boys’ funerals drew so many people. Services for Brenden and Ivan were held together in Gloucester Township, fitting, everyone said, because they were “inseparable.”
Perez addressed the teens in her eulogy for Brenden.
“This is just proof of the impact you all made in your very short time here on Earth,” she acknowledged of all those mourners.
A GoFundMe page is helping the teens’ families pay for funeral expenses. It can be found at Fundraiser for Izzy Perez by Laura Leigh Perez : Funeral Aid for Dedo Dom and Ivan.
“These boys were amazing,” Perez reflected. “And the effects of them no longer being here with us are more than we can handle. We loved all three of these boys so deeply, and I hope they’re smiling and looking down on us knowing that.”
Sources: Legacy.com, Ecovita.com
